RED
by Sickle Sword
Summary: Sometime even walls can bleed. [Scott Centric]
1. Chapter 1

**RED**

**SOMETIMES EVEN THE WALLS BLEED. (SCOTT CENTRIC)**

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They found him on the 7th day. Symbolic, probably.  
He was chained to a wall, his eyes puffy and red and wide open, with the usual too bright energy emitting from them. It made the gloomy room look even scarier, everything washing with scarlet. Everything. Can walls bleed?  
For him, maybe they did.

Near him was a large window with the city stretched from sea to shore, beautiful and mighty with its life. Above him there was hanged a large oval lamp. Their reports claimed that this was the source of his gift- transforming light energy and making it as his own, emitting is as a gift of himself to the world, with every bit shortening his life. Till the next dosage of light came. He could survive 48 hours without light of any kind before his eyes begin to bleed. One red becoming another.  
He couldn't survive 7 days without sunlight. Apparently he could. He waited with his eyes open. For them.

"We're here, Scott, to bring you home." Jean whispered to him from afar. Getting too close was dangerous, she knew. His intensity could kill. "Please. Close your eyes."

Maybe he didn't hear her. Maybe he couldn't do it. Maybe both. Who knew the extent of the damage that was done to him for 7 whole days, without them nearby to help him as they have done for longer than half of his life?  
A man can't last4 days without water, how could he ever hope to last 7 without whatever made him tick?  
Yet he did. For her. She was sure of that. He loved her, just like she loved him. In her own way. And even if he teased her every once in a while that she should have chosen him and not Logan, they both knew that it was an old argument. What was already done was done, and history should dwell where it belonged- unremembered.  
But what a person left with when he had no past?

Logan once described it as being only part alive, a shell. And she . . . she believed that what the mind chose to remember were the only bits that matter. She loved Scott once and then they broke up. The ugly parts never happened. There wasn't a wall between them, not a bridge. There was simply not enough water left.

He stared at the same invisible spot in midair, his eyes sunken and there were black circles around them, as if he never slept. Red and black, like a bruise. And there was a bluish aura around him from the neon lights that were scattered around. That was what helped them to find him in the tunnels, running away from the guards when they suddenly saw a blue light. Blue and red.  
Take that, Superman. Not all heroes were made of steel.

She took a step forward toward him. Hesitant and confused. To shake him, to set him free. Warmth licked her face; first kind and then burning. "My parents used to fight like that," he'd tell her after every time they fought. As if it was an excuse. For him, it probably was. For her- only in the beginning.  
A person can't last4 days without water, how could she ever hope to last4 months with a lie?

But she loved him, once. So she took a step closer. She could hear her friends' shouts behind her to draw back, they'd find another way to save him. She wouldn't do any good. But louder than that, she could hear Logan's silence. Maybe he, too, believed that if God took a rest from his work at the 7th day, he could spare his wife a few minutes of foolishness.

Another step. This wasn't foolishness. Nor this was bravery. Suicide, maybe, but what did it matter to the body when the soul died?

And another. The heat was unbearable and the world swam with color. Almost beautiful, if it wasn't washed with blood. She wanted to turn her face to a cooler place, but couldn't. Wouldn't. This was her gift for him, him, who used to be her sun.

Another was met with resistance and she lowered her eyes to remove the barrier. But it was his hand, stretched to the side to stop her while his head never turned. The energy wave never withered.  
She tried to push but he was decisive.

"Why?" she asked his hand and he kept staring at the wall.

Intrigued, she followed his eyes. There was a small box on the end of the wall, designed to contain the energy. With growing dread she followed the attached wires as they crawled around the corners, their hiss increased while she got closer to their source. And then, just like that, they disappeared underneath the floor.

She began tearing the floor tiles away with her bare hands. She was vaguely aware of hands that appeared beside her to help and the tools that were afterwards brought to do this better than she ever could. Barely aware yet so very grateful.  
Yet so very alone.

The hole grew piece by piece and when it finally uncovered a small generator, she didn't know what to make of this.

And then all of a sudden, she did. The stamp Electroditis was hard to miss, how could she miss the connection while this was their power plant?

"They started working a week ago when the coal ran out." She heard someone behind her saying. He didn't need to say anymore. The meaning was plain. Within the last 7 days Electroditis came to control the market with its unique solar transforming equipment. They were the only ones prepared, the only ones still functioning when the last coal mines exploded. By now they lit every house, every refrigerator, supplied every power to every factory in the country. Including the nuclear facilities of which generators ran out in the acclimating days.  
No, not them. Scott did.

"It will take us a few more months to master the technology." She heard steps behind her. And a gentle voice. But how could such a voice fit a heartless man?

"Leave him alone!" she leaped on him, her fists a mess of fury and despair. Left, right, left, harder. She hit him with all her heart, wanting to rip his useless heart open with her telekinesis but restrained herself just in time. He was a regular man. And as such a part of the majority. He had power over her.  
But more than that, he was so achingly vulnerable against her.

"Jean, relax." She felt a hand on her shoulder and even though she wanted to shrug it away, she knew Storm was right. It wouldn't do any good. She couldn't save Scott. Not anymore. Maybe she never could in the first place.

"Please don't kill me." the man begged for his life. It was always more difficult to call a man heartless after he begged for his life. But after all, she only needed to remind herself, even animals have survival instincts.

"Why?" she growled.

"Because you need me." And the hardest part was that he was right. In order to save the day, again, she had to leave him. She only needed to walk away and to never look back, save a millions of lives, maybe. Save a planet. And years from now it wouldn't matter when she'd get a humanitarian price for perfecting the new electricity technology. It wouldn't matter, because she would forget, as she always did with harsh realities. Because what she chose to forget never actually mattered, did it?

"Release him."

"You know I can't. Not unless you want the whole city to collapse into a nuclear catastrophe."

"Then find another way."

"I told you, this will take time. This was the only way. Or did you think I enjoy doing this?"

"I didn't know that a man like you is capable to feel."

"You call me heartless. It's ok. But let me save the world. Just a few more months, and he could be released."

"He can't survive few months, it's killing him."

"Then he'd die, and take this country with him."

"He knows." She whispered and didn't know what she was more afraid of, that he did know and would therefore sacrifice everything for the rest of them, or that he didn't.

"Yes."

"You son of a bitch! It's not humanly possible to do it!"

"But he's not human, is he?" and when he saw the look on her face he hurried to say, "No, I didn't mean it that way. It's his mutation that would enable him to last as long as we need him to. I know it."

"You're wrong. He can't survive that long. No one can."

"Then help him."

"What do you think I'm trying to do?" she cried out, enraged.

"No, you can't save him. But you can help him. Help me to develop the solar technology in capacities that would be enough to maintain a city. Just one city, it would be enough. Then it would be safe to release him."

"You truly are heartless."

"I'm not the devil, Lady. I'm only trying to save the world."

"By killing a man!"

"A mutant."

"A man!"

"He's a sacrifice I'm willing to pay. The question is, won't you?"

And there was suddenly silence as if there were just the two of them in the world and she looked at the horror- stricken faces of her friends, and then to Scott's painful gift, when she understood that she couldn't do it. She couldn't make the world burn.

"I'm sorry." She whispered desperately to Scott, wishing him to understand. She could see his back bent as he seated Hercules on his shoulder, his hand quivered and fingers crossed. Their good- luck charm. His way of letting her know that she made the right call.  
A person can't survive longer than4 days without water, but he hopes that he can for the ones he loves. And they wish that he can as well.

The rest of this day became hazy, maybe a dream. But then she sat on her bed, her head buried in her hands, and sent a silent prayer for him. She closed her eyes for a moment and then with determination got up and hurried with sure steps to the room on her left. Cold hands touching warm skin, she kissed her son's brow for goodnight and opened the red lava lamp beside him.

She didn't know it but as the boy would grow, just like his father; he would shoot fire from his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**RED**

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7 days earlier:  
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Her lies condemned him. She knew that with the same clarity that she knew that the global vengeance would someday come for her.  
For she has taken a god and made him a mortal, stripping him bare, his emotions visible to the whole world to see. And then, after the throne of the Olympus has being taken away from him, she left.  
Logan told her that it shouldn't bother her. Because it wasn't all her fault. Couples do that sometimes, fight. And the fact that in one disastrous word she could crumble all that she's ever loved, was part of her.  
Part of her curse, she said.  
He only smiled and hugged her with metal claws.

If she was honest with herself, and with him, none of what happened later would have. The gods that she has worshipped were of equality and justice, science was the fire on which her torch burnt at nights. Yet she mocked them when it suited her, it seemed. When it was most critical, she chose to become a coward.  
No one can be a saint forever, Logan told her.  
But he never even tried. How could he ever know the feeling of an angel that his wings were clipped?

She strolled in the long halls of the school like a ghost, her face ashen, her eyes like falling stars. And she wept and dreamt of worse beginnings and better endings, for that what truly mattered in her world. The mind shouldn't remember all the ugly parts, so why should the middle count?  
She remembered starry days and thunderous mornings, nights of passion that healed her heart. Yet her mind was trickier than her, it sometimes showed her what she never wanted to see. She closed her mind to those mirages, attaching paperclips to Logan's butterfly collection. She talked and painted and laughed, for she's been the only mind reader now that the professor died. She was the only one who knew she was faking.

That was the weird part, really. That no one seemed to sense that she was pretending. And that bothered her more than it should have, probably. Because she was used of being called on her bluffs. The professor was always there to remind her to be true, and even him, whom she blamed with so much passion with apathy, always knew to pull her through.

Logan couldn't do that, and it bothered her sometimes. Because he could follow her trails to the end of the world, her smell and his senses a prefect match, but there was no one left to find her wandering sanity anymore. Her mind was nothing more than a clog in the dreams she wove.

So she continued being herself as if nothing ever mattered but being the best teacher this school has ever seen. Yet she knew that she couldn't be this perfect image, not anymore. Not when her demons would someday break free.  
And they will, she knew that. Because even demons have wishes of their own.  
So she killed them, her demons. Who needed them, anyway? Who needed to be human when you were mutant?

And at nights she dreamt of better understandings, the kind that comes from meeting more people, and less with having a natural gift. The pull that comes only to a selected few who were fortunate enough to care. And she cared once, no more.  
There was no one left to care about.

"I've had a really huge fight with him today." She hissed into Logan's neck, biting the raw flesh and finding a perverse joy in seeing the usually perfect skin broken. But the ecstasy stayed only a few minutes. No joy should last longer.  
He moaned his disapproval and she only laughed for his insecurities. She's not going to return to Scott even if he begged which is very unlikely to happen. But they were still attached in a force that she seemed to never be able to break. His fault, probably.  
Her fault.

The romantic music in the background was changed into the news. Typical. The real world has a knack to interfere in the most unbecoming times.

_The Mayer Folroy proclaimed that the new progressive taxing system should reveal to be beneficial already in the coming year. 'the treasury has never being in a better state,' he said to the press, ' and the new reform should bring the expected growth.'_

Lies of politician are the lies of mere humans, afraid. She knew the difference now between sweet spoken lies and those that are being shouted in harsh hatred.  
Both are truth in their own way, both are disastrous just the same.

_The 4 Hitchhikers' Murderers should come to trial next Sunday. The Judge Stanly Branford predicts their punishment to be a lethal injection. Those 4 murders were known for their brutality as they used to strangle their victims before they cut them into pieces and put them in cloth covered jars. The defenses will probably plead for insanity._

The evil of mankind is all consuming, she thought as she buried herself further into Logan's body. Her nails marked his skin and his mouth covered her own. She moaned and screamed and through the heat and fogginess, she continued listening to the hypnotizing carelessness of the narrator:

_There were more 3 traffic victims this weekend. The police is yet to determined the cause._

_Electroditis has announced a new solar technology that should start lighting their plant starting of today, ' this new technology is environment- friendly and we can all rest assured that it would not run out in the next millennia or so. I think this is safe to claim that this is a true miracle.'_

_And for another matter, the new legislation against mutants has produced large protest in humanitarian groups. The head of Michigan University, Efraim Devevich assured that he would fight for the freedom of those who can't. A large campaign against the humanitarian crimes should take place this Tuesday in front of the government's house._

She knew that at least some of this should matter to her. She's a part of the human race, she should listen, she should protest for her own rights.  
Only, she was too tired for that now. She was too tired to care.

Even then she knew that in time she would come to regret her apathy, but hindsight Is an annoying things. Besides, how can a phoenix be reborn from the ashes if it was never burnt?


	3. Chapter 3

**RED**

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6 days earlier:  
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She heard voices coming and going as they pleased, and hope she did not sink to the land of dreams again, after all the ropes that attached her to there were clipped so long before, brutally and with her full consent. She wanted to get up from the bed but her limbs were too heavy for her mind to have full control on, and besides, what awaits her outside of her door? Why should she want to get up when she's so content here, safe and warm and loved?

But reality has a tendency to barge in, has she mentioned it before? Fate's slaves have descended from the heaves to bring her more bad news. Scott's missing, they told her, and they don't know where he is. They tried, they promised. But he's gone.

And she heard their voices and thought of the one voice that is missing, the professor's. He could have helped them, she knew it. If he'd only fought hard enough to stay alive. If they only meant more to him, if only... if only life had a greater pull than death.

"What do you offer we should do?" she heard her voice out in the open and was surprised by how steady it sounded, how uncaring. As if she didn't care about him at all, as if she cared enough to be clear mined through it, to want to find him.

"We wanted... if you could ask Logan. ." and she knew in that instant what they were asking. The hate between the 2 man was obvious to all, the friendship- well hidden. Behind bigotry and norms. They thought that it would take her to beg Logan for him to want and find Scott. They didn't know him well as she did, but then again, nobody knew him well as she did, including himself. Only the outside observer that touched another heart from within, who experienced another soul by its strings and had the power to cut it, yet chose to seal them whole instead, only she could know the true essence of a person. And she was all of the above, she has chosen Logan to live in the moment she had full power over his life. She's not proud of it and it's something none of them talk about.

Something none of them will. Some secrets are better to stay buried forever, even after eternities will pass. For why should healed wounds be reopened? What purpose will it serve?

"I'll ask him" she promised and knew that if she knows her husband as well as she thinks she does, then he's already on Scott's trail. That's the kind of relationship they've had, all the 3 of them. So bitter and painful yet very real. They never pretended hate anymore where there was love, and the 3 of them were a shape that couldn't be whole with just 2. Maybe that's why Scott and she couldn't make it. How can two make a perfect triangle?

The moment they've left she begged the gods who didn't know she worshipped them for the safety of the one she loves. She didn't put labels- the one she loves the most for it would be a lie, and if she tells it to herself enough time, she might believe it. And that time when she did believe it, well, it isn't a place she wants to come back to.

Peter was born at the 8th of September. Just a minute before the day ended. Just a minute after the end of the world.

She remembers holding him, so young and innocent, and hating him. She felt so wrong, a mother should love her child, doesn't she? But she couldn't. His sight reminded her everything that she wanted to forget, everything that she yearned that wasn't a part of her life. It was so easy, to just leave him right there, screaming, and to think of nothing but of the darkness that consumed her.

In time she became to be aware of strong hands taking him away from her, to wash him, to tend for him, but she couldn't make herself care. She was swayed by a world of ghosts that danced around her, her mind reaching to the center of the earth, calling for the lava to come and take her with it. She floated through minds and stones, never staying long enough to care, never leaving soon enough to not remember.

She danced in the body of a young dancer, so fragile and terrified from the big bad world that awaited her around the corner. One dance was all that she allowed herself, one handshake, one fuck. She experienced the entire universe while her body was rotting on a bed in the 3rd avenue of the real world.

When she slept, she dreamt of others, or maybe she never even dreamt and it was real. Perhaps there weren't her dreams anymore, perhaps her body wasn't hers. There was so much that called her out there, she ought only to reach out and touch it-

Yet she stayed in bed, crying as if something in her just died.

The nice nurse tried to speak to her in the beginning. She only turned her head away.

"My name is Susan; I'm here to help you."

But no one could help her any longer. She couldn't help herself.

Susan never gave up, even though she probably should have. And Jane was grateful that she hasn't, even though it was the only emotion left tin her. Then Susan began mentioning psychiatrist help, and though there wasn't much that she cared of anymore, this much she apparently did. A lost memory of worst times appeared in her shredded mind, begging not to be sent back to hell.

But she has befriended Satan already, how much worse can his kingdom be?

Yet in a growing mix of desperation of vengeance, she touched Susan's hand and let herself be sucked into a dream. Where she had a nice house with a mortgage, a nice husband and 3 happy children, who sometimes fought over TV.

And it was so close, so easy, to just sink further away.

There were no nights anymore. No suns. Day by day she could feel a small weight being lifted from her hands, being taken care of and then being returned to her, as if she cared. She looked at her baby with glazed eyes, and thought of someone else's children, of someone else's life. As if it was normal. As if she was still sane.

But then Logan was there. And he picked Peter to his arms in an almost paternal affection, and hissed to her ear:" he's a beautiful boy."

It shouldn't have made her so happy to hear him compliment her, but it did. It broke something in the mask of apathy that she didn't seem to be able to lower before. But now she could, and she could suddenly hear her son, not of the annoying baby that was given to her, but of something of hers and Scotts. Hers.

Scott was a deserter, and she vowed in that moment not to hate her son for his father's sins.

"Yes, he is."

"I'm sorry about Charles."

"So was I." she swore she wouldn't be bitter, but what do vows one tells himself matter?

"They are worry about you."

"You were worried about me."

"I was worried about you." And just like that, it seemed as if everything that was ever needed to be said, was already out in the open. Speaking may be a strong purifier, but silence can be just as powerful. And sometimes even more.

"Don't leave." she begged from Logan. Even though she knew it was wrong. Even though nothing was right in her world anymore, but his presence there- it felt natural. As if Peter wanted him to be there.

As if she knew what she wanted.

And he didn't question her, didn't act surprised. Only looked her straight in the eyes and reached out his hand. "Ok."


End file.
